Six individuals who, as mistress of ceremonies and Azteca America anchorwoman Ana Mejia pointed out, “have given a piece of their soul to make sure our community is a wonderful place in which to live,” are the recipients of the 2007 Celebrate Culture Civil Rights Awards. They were honored at a dinner held in the Donald R. Seawell Grand Ballroom in the Denver Performing Arts Complex.
Presented by NEWSED Community Development Corporation and the Santa Fe Drive Redevelopment Corporation, the awards went to Mary Lou Makepeace, a former mayor of Colorado Springs who is now executive director of the Gay & Lesbian Fund for Colorado; Denver Police Lt. Tony Lopez; former Denver City Council President Elbra Wedgeworth; businessman Robert Alvarado; Geraldine Gonzales, widow of Chicano rights activist Corky Gonzales; and Raul Yzaguirre, a past president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza.
The awards — handsome Lucite sculptures — were accompanied by a very personal gift: individual poems written for them by Ramon Del Castillo. Each poem traced how that particular honoree acquired the mettle and convictions he or she has exhibited over the years.
For example: Del Castillo’s poem described Gonzales as an “obsidian butterfly whose wings … provided guidance and nurturance to communities lost in despondency, seeking out true liberation.” Alvarado, Del Castillo noted, was “the California Chicano, a dreamer from East Los (Angeles)” who worked his fingers to the bone harvesting carrots in the fields before moving to Colorado and becoming a highly successful franchise owner and nationally known leader in making sure minority business owners and contractors had equal consideration in winning bids for public works projects.
The awards were presented by special friends of the honorees: Marvin Kelly, Adrienne Benavidez, former Mayor Wellington Webb, Walter Jones, Pierre Jimenez and Mayor John Hickenlooper. Guests included Lucia Guzman, executive director of Denver’s Agency for Human Rights & Community Relations; Denver City Council members Judy Montero and Rick Garcia; Fire Chief Larry Trujillo; Manager of Safety Al LaCabe; Superintendent of Schools Michael Bennet; Sharon Vigil, chairwoman of the Latina Chamber of Commerce; NEWSED board president Jan Campbell; the SFDRC board president, Rogelio Rodriguez; director Bette Phelps;
and former Denver Fire Chief Rich Gonzales.
Mary Lou Makepeace, who had been Colorado Springs’ first female mayor, called on guests to help further the drive for equality by speaking up. “I’m here to make things happen,” she said, “particularly in the area of discrimination. Discrimination is fueled by those who merely observe, and I have to ask … how can anyone sit back when someone is being treated differently? Speak up! It’s the way to change wrong to right.”
Police Lt. Tony Lopez, commander of the Denver Police Department intelligence unit and bomb squad, came to America from Cuba with his parents and siblings when he was 4. When his father couldn’t find work in Miami, they moved to Denver.
Attorney Adrienne Benavidez, who introduced Lopez, recalled the family’s first Halloween in Denver. They didn’t speak English at the time and were unfamiliar with the holiday. “Tony was home alone with his mom and siblings when the doorbell rang and kids in costumes were standing there. They didn’t know what to think — especially when it happened again and again.”
But they caught on quickly. Eventually, Tony earned two undergraduate degrees and two of his siblings have doctorates. As he accepted the award, Lopez, who spends much of his free time mentoring the youth of the community, said that he was “honored and speechless” to be recognized in this way.
Elbra Wedgeworth, who was introduced by former Mayor Webb, is the youngest of six children and before being elected to the Denver City Council she served in the Denver auditor’s office, as clerk and recorder and the deputy director of regulatory affairs. She is now a senior executive at Denver Health and president of the Denver Host Committee for the 2008 Democratic Convention.
“You can’t find a more committed person,” Webb noted. “She stands tall, she stands strong and she does it with such dignity and grace.”
“Not bad for a girl that grew up in the Curtis Park projects,” Wedgeworth responded, adding that she has always lived by the motto: “Don’t let circumstances define you. Define yourself.”
Robert Alvarado said he came to Denver 30 years ago “hungry for success.” And when the business opportunity that he thought awaited failed to materialize, he and wife, Linda, decided to stay and make it on their own, building Alvarado Construction to regional prominence and owning dozens of fast-food franchises in Colorado and New Mexico.
“Bob is a fighter,” said presenter Walter Jones, “and his heart and soul never wavered as he led the charge fighting for the rights of the minority community. He’s a committed visionary and self-made man.”
Using a baseball analogy (Linda Alvarado is a part-owner of the Colorado Rockies) to describe his philosophy toward equal rights, Alvarado said that no matter what stadium the game is played in “The bases are all the same distance apart and every batter gets three strikes before he’s declared out. When you let people work together in partnernship, amazing things can happen.”
Geraldine Gonzales isn’t one to ask for acclaim or accolades, said presenter Pierre Jimenez, but “Without her and her family there wouldn’t have been a Chicano movement in Colorado. They gave us our self-respect.”
“My award was my husband,” Gonzales said. “He was the first to stand up for our people and for justice.”
Yzaguirre, who was introduced by Mayor Hickenlooper, recalled a recent incident where someone asked his son what his father did. When the son told her that Yzaguirre was heavily involved in Latino civil rights, the woman replied that she didn’t know there was a Latino civil rights movement.
“What a rich history we have, but no one knows about it,” Yzaguirre lamented.

For pictures taken at the awards dinner, visit denverpost.com/SeenGallery

Denver Post Society Editor Joanne Davidson can be reached at 303-809-1314 or jdavidson@denverpost.com. Her column appears every Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.

Study after study has shown that when it comes to charitable fundraisers, Denver has more per capita than any comparably sized city in the nation. Joanne Davidson has been covering them for The Denver Post since 1985, coming here from her native California where she'd spent the previous seven years as San Francisco bureau chief for U.S. News & World Report magazine.